Marc looks like a nice guy. We've never met, but I suspect that if we did, I might find myself liking him.

This said, his editorial about banning AR-15 ammunition was largely Do Do. His drill sergeant was mistaken. The actual history of the development and adoption of the M-16 and its ammo is long and convoluted. After adoption by the Air Force in 1961, there was huge resistance to it by the Army and Marines. They even fiddled with test rifles to make them not function. Rifles were sent for testing, hoping that they would find that the ammo was too weak for combat.

Testing found that bullets fired at close range tended to make conventional wounds. At longe ranges they did sometimes tumble, causing greater internal injury. Your notion that the wounds inflicted on the victims at Newtown were worse because of bullet tumbling is nonsense. The .223 caliber round is .22 caliber. A 9mm pistol round is .35 caliber, then there are .40, and .45 caliber pistols that make much larger holes causing much faster bleed-out and death.

FYI, the .223 cartridge which you would ban is also used in a large numbers of "sporting rifles," usually bolt action rifles, and is commonly used for varmint hunting. Of course I wouldn't expect you to know this. Seemingly, your expertise on firearms is that you don't believe that most Americans should be allowed to have some of them.

Folks, like me, Marc Charisse has made the personal decision not to own an AR-15. It's our right. What he is talking around is that he believes that you should be prohibited from having the right to make that same choice. He seems to think that ordinary, peaceful, law abiding Americans just can't be trusted to responsibly possess many types of firearms, in complete contravention of all available research.

Marc wants a prohibition. Anyone remember the last time we had prohibition?

It would be great is Marc would stop all of the passive aggressive beating around the bush, and just say that he does not believe that you can be trusted. Of the annual 16,000 firearm-involved murders, about 800 are committed with rifles. Most are with handguns. Hey Marc ... Want to ban handguns? Many more are beaten to death annually than are killed with rifles. Hey, let's ban fists.